With the proliferation over the last 15 years or so of TV networks followed more recently by satellite radio channels and online streaming services for both video and audio content (like Hulu or Spotify), there has been a commensurate increase in the amount and availability of advertisements. After all, just about all forms of “free” content we consume are ad-supported. With …
Soccer, Leadership, and Organizational Culture
In the debate on the relative importance of company culture as a contributor to an organization’s success (or failure), I have mostly come down on the side that culture is far, far overrated as a driver or performance. I have argued (and presented a few times), that more prosaic and definable elements like “strategy” and “talent” are, if not more …
Will HR and Talent One Day Take Their Cues From Walmart?
Always low prices. Always. I think that has been, more or less, the tagline for Walmart for the last 198 years. The world’s largest retailer and largest private sector employer in the USA with over 1.4M employees has competed on price (and massive selection and expansion to the point where just about everyone in the country lives within 15 minutes of …
When Does Your Insane Work Ethic Backfire? When You Don’t Know When To Shut Up About It…
Editor’s Note: We’re bringing this piece of gold back from the vault because it qualifies as a “Best Of FOT…” post. And because it’s good to be reminded that your work ethic can be super annoying… and kind of rude. Author Note: Although this post is running mid-week, it was written over the weekend, where some of the behavior that is described …
Steve Boese shares PODCAST – #HRHappyHour 220 – Kathryn Minshew from The Muse
This week on the HR Happy Hour Show, Steve and Trish welcomed Kathryn Minshew, Founder and CEO of the wildly popular website The Muse to talk about the next generation of workers, and how organizations can best engage with and attract this highly sought-after talent pool. Kathryn shared insights on the kinds of resources for career planning and development that these millennial workers are seeking out, …
So, Are You Working This Week?
Last week on Friday was possibly the slowest official work day I think I have had in 2015. I think I had one meeting, took maybe one call, and received probably the fewest number of emails in a day since the end-of-year holidays. It was refreshing and kind of unnerving at the same time. Why was it so quiet? Am …
Riding The HR Hype Train
Our pals over at research and advisory company, Gartner, just released their famous technology “Hype Cycle,” a graphical representation of many modern technologies and how they stack up on a continuum that can best be described as, “You probably are just hearing about this” all the way through to “This is everywhere, and no longer all that interesting to talk about.” To …
Steve Boese shares The Obligatory Amazon Take
By now you have read (or at least heard about), the New York Times’ blistering takedown of life working at Amazon, your favorite online shopping destination for just about anything you’ll ever need, (and lots and lots of things you don’t). If you are interested in work, workplaces, culture, and performance, the piece is definitely worth a long read, and …
The Uberification of HR
The “gig” economy. Labor on demand. The “death” of jobs. Whatever phrase you prefer to describe the recent surge in the amount and influence of companies like Uber; Lyft; Upwork; and scores of others, this trend towards a more fundamental change in how we view work; employment; and the nature of the relationship between “employers” and “employees” (using air quotes …
Steve Boese talks HRE Column: Some common questions (and even a few answers) about HR Tech
Here is my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech that can be found here. As usual, the Inside HR Tech column is about, well, HR Tech, (sort of like I used to write about all the time on this blog), and it was inspired by the …